can't believe what's happening now
by Lavinia Swire
Summary: Lucy feels like she has spent most of her life in a state of non-understanding. Written for the Gift-Giving Extravaganza!


**This is my (very very late) fic #2 for the Gift Giving Extravaganza, for _angels are watching over you_. Massive thanks to MissingMommy for beta reading this for me!**

* * *

Lucy feels like she has spent most of her life in a state of non-understanding.

She's six when Percy says calmly one breakfast time that Mummy's gone away and she won't be coming back. Molly is ten and she shouts and stomps around the house for hours, but Lucy just sits quietly with her teddy bear, because forever is a long time for a six-year old who's hardly grasped hours and minutes. It seems like even longer because Percy can't plait her hair properly, but Mummy can do it when she comes back.

* * *

She stops asking people to explain things.

Uncle Harry always says that there's no such thing as a stupid question (and then promptly rolls his eyes when his sons launch into a litany of ridiculous queries with non-existent answers). But after Lucy innocently asks why Mummy isn't back yet, and Percy drops a plate and Molly shouts that she's so stupid, why doesn't she get it, she decides that even Uncle Harry can be wrong about things.

It takes her longer to learn to read than it had taken Molly – in fact, it gets to the point where Percy starts talking about visiting St. Mungo's to see if they can 'deal with it'.

They stay with Uncle Bill and Aunty Fleur during the Audrey fiasco. Victoire starts off helping Lucy with her book, swishing her hair about and saying each word very, very s-l-o-w-l-y, but when Teddy arrives she leaves Lucy and Louis to their own devices.

She later takes all the credit when Lucy reads her way carefully through the first page of '_The_ _Tales of Beedle the Bard_', running her finger carefully along each line of text as everyone oohs and aahs. But Lucy doesn't care. She smiles at Louis instead, and neither of them ever tell that he had helped her to learn the first page of the book off by heart, line by line.

The words still jumble themselves around on the page like somebody's charmed them. But Louis helps the knot in her stomach to ease, and she can breathe more easily again.

* * *

Until Louis is at Beauxbatons, and Lucy is at Hogwarts on her own, and everything is suddenly sososo complicated again.

"Not good enough, Miss Weasley," Professor McGonagall snaps after one particularly frustrating Transfiguration lesson. "It isn't the fact that you seem determined to be hopeless at this subject, but you refuse to ask for help. If you don't understand the work, kindly speak to me about it – you're becoming a safety hazard to have in my lesson," she adds, jabbing her wand in the direction of Cassie Greengrass, whose whiskers and tail disappear instantly.

"Sorry, Professor," Lucy whispers, and her hair swings in front of her face like a curtain. She gave up plaiting it a long time ago, neat and nice with a silky ribbon; Molly was too impatient to do it for her, and her father too clumsy, so now she lets it fall as it pleases.

Molly is sharp and focused with her hair in a crisp ponytail and her hand fitting neatly in Lysander's. Lucy is drifting and frustrating, her tie always loose and her bag slipping off her shoulder.

Louis tries to help, but he's two years older and the classes are different at Beauxbatons, and, anyway, Lucy refuses to discuss school in her letters to him if she can possibly help it.

As fifth year wends its way onwards, Professor Longbottom is concerned, and Professor Bones tells Lucy, in no uncertain terms, that she will remain at the bottom of the class for Muggle Studies unless she makes some serious improvements.

Lucy doesn't bother with the improvements, but she decides that a change of scene might be nice.

* * *

When Lucy comes home for Easter, Louis is there too, and, after suffering through a certified Percy lecture about the necessity of applying oneself, the two of them Floo back to Shell Cottage to laze in the garden.

(_Merlin, he's grown_, Lucy thinks.)

Writing to Louis has never been a chore, even if the letters tried to rearrange themselves as they hit the paper, but there's still so much that she never realised that she wasn't telling him, and now that they're face to face she finds herself spilling it all out.

His advice is typical Louis.

"Stick at it, Luce, and stop whining. Then you can come and stay with me in the summer and I'll show you round."

He grins at her and, because Louis never fails to make everything better, she can't help but smile back.

* * *

She spends the summer in Paris with Louis, letting everything wash over her – _parlez-vous anglais, monsieur?_ and laughter like champagne bubbles when nobody does. Louis has always been more French than his sisters, and he takes advantage of that now, showing off and speaking to everyone in French, and then translating for Lucy's benefit.

She's always lost, but it feels right somehow. And she doesn't understand the fluttering in her stomach when Louis grips her hand, blames it on the sun because they're cousins, and it is all so far beyond her understanding that she very firmly doesn't try to think about it.

One afternoon they climb the Eiffel Tower, leaning against each other when they reach the top, out of breath. Lucy takes dozens of pictures with her cheap Muggle camera, and then persuades an American tourist to take a photograph of her and Louis, their arms around one another, squinting into the sun.

She doesn't kiss him then, because kissing in Paris in the summer sunshine is a step too far. But little Lucy Weasley, who never got on with reading books or runes or Potions recipes, can read the look on Louis' face without any struggle or rearranging.

She doesn't kiss him then, but later, when the summer sunshine's gone for the day and they're back at their hotel room and complaining about their aching feet, and it feels as though they have all the time in the world.

* * *

She goes back to Hogwarts. She suffers in silence through the early months of sixth year. She still lets her hair hang in her eyes and her grades drop lower.

And one morning at breakfast, as her owl drops a letter with a French postmark onto her plate of toast, she realises as easily as breathing that she loves France and she loves Louis and maybe that's all that matters.

* * *

The next summer she leaves her wand behind.

She learns French, because speaking's easier than writing and it's nothing like learning pointless runes, and her hair grows too long, spread out like gold on the pillow in the morning while the sun shines through the too-thin curtains of their rented flat.

Molly doesn't approve, but:

"He helps me breathe," Lucy says, smiling.

And Molly sighs and shakes her head a little, because she's working at the Ministry now, with an office and an engagement ring, and Lucy still confuses her.

But Lucy doesn't mind. Who needs NEWTs when she can work in a shop here and practice her choppy French and love Louis?

And maybe their family will never understand, but it doesn't look like it matters at all.


End file.
